AMRAVATI: Y S Jagan, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh has directed the state government officials to impose single use plastic ban with immediate effect. The impose come into play after CM express his serious anguish about climate change and growing environmental concerns across the globe and told officials there shouldn’t be any compromise in imposing plastic ban and handling environmental issues.
The CM had a meeting on September 26, with the officials from the state forest department to discuss about the plastic ban and other environmental concerns.
The CM said that the new rules and guidelines will be devised to make the environmental guidelines tough. He said that the government would take the responsibility of containing the pollutants from the industries by levying green taxes.
“Future generations will not spare us if we continue to be negligent in tackling the violation of environmental rules,” the CM stressed. He further discussed about the pollution caused by pharma industry and said that only 30 per cent of the one lakh tonnes of pollutants are being treated by the pharma industry while leaving the rest into water bodies and air.
He noted that the government failed to act on environmental issues aptly in a hurry to attract investments from various industries in the state. “We need industries. We also need to take stringent measures to protect the environment,” CM emphasised.
He said that the government would levy green tax to handle the job of treating the pollutants from the industry.
CM also emphasized on protecting the Godavari river basin which has already begun to get heavily affected from the industrial pollutants being dumped in it and ordered officials to take up mission-Godavari to focus on cleaning the east and west Godavari canals.